Paranoid Parking

When smoke drifted out of the halted
construction site on Southeast Division Street early March 29, the owner
of nearby Victory Bar called the cops. It wasn’t his first call about
the unfinished 37th Street Apartments: Two weeks earlier, he’d reported
seeing a man ripping out copper wiring.

Police
said the latest incident at the controversial project wasn’t a
political statement: just three drunken men in their 20s who broke into
the half-finished building, set fire to a page of blueprints and shot
off fire extinguishers.

But
Beaverton-based developer Dennis Sackhoff is hiring 24-hour security for
his project, which has already been incendiary enough for many people
along Division.

The building is at
the center of a political fight over the city’s planning and
transportation policies. A decade ago, the City Council approved rules
allowing developers to forgo onsite parking for new housing close to
transit lines. The idea was to encourage more density and help
developers keep down costs.

The change has
spurred a rash of large apartment buildings—including seven along
Division—with no parking for tenants. Neighbors have complained the
streets in front of their homes are now jammed with cars.

The issue blew open
last summer as one of the commissioners who wrote the change, Charlie
Hales, was running for mayor (“Block Busters,” WW, Sept. 19, 2012). Since then, Hales has been backpedaling from the policy.

Sackhoff’s 81-unit
building project has four stories of bicycle racks but not a single
automobile parking space. He’s waiting for the city to let him apply for
a new building permit after a state land-use board disallowed the
project on a technicality unrelated to parking.

When city officials
tried to find a quick legal fix for Sackhoff’s project last
month—without a promised hearing—Hales stepped in to quash the plan.

The hearing is set
for April 4. What’s clear is that the city’s current policy is all but
dead. The Bureau of Planning and Sustainability is now proposing that
developers offer at least one parking space for every four apartments in
buildings with more than 40 units.

Division Street
activists want the city to require Sackhoff to add 20 parking spaces to
his half-finished building. “The best interest of the city should be in
serving its neighborhoods,” says Richard Melo of Richmond Neighbors for
Responsible Growth, “not bailing out land developers who have
impulse-control issues.”

Even in a town
famously enamored with public process, this is a free-for-all. At least a
dozen organizations from competing sides will present their case for
how the city should change its policy.

Naysaying Neighbors:
Homeowners who thought the neighborhood associations too milquetoast
started their own splinter groups, such as Richmond Neighbors for
Responsible Growth, to fight the apartments.

What they want:
One space for every three apartments, though nobody agrees whether the
rule should start at 20 units or 40. They also want sign-off privileges
on designs of new projects.

The Enviro-Planner Coalition:
The yin to the homeowners’ yang, smart-growth fans—who want the city to
stay the course on dense neighborhoods—created Portland Neighbors for
Sustainable Development in December. The group includespedestrian
group Oregon Walks and two old lions of Oregon land-use fights—former
1000 Friends of Oregon directors Robert Liberty and Bob Stacey,
neighbors who live near Division.

What they want:
The city to stick to its guns and say no onsite parking is needed. But
they’ll settle for the city’s proposal, plus neighborhood parking
permits.

What they want: One onsite parking spot for every eight units, increasing for buildings with more than 40 units.

The Commissioner: City
Commissioner Nick Fish was unusually visible as the apartment
controversy heated up last month—even calling himself “outraged” when
Bureau of Development Services officials tried to gin up a new permit
for Sackhoff without a hearing.

What he wants:
A compromise that starts with one onsite parking spot for every five
apartments for buildings with more than 30 units, and moves to one spot
per three apartments for buildings with more than 50 units.

The Developer: Sackhoff—until now mum as nine apartment complexes he’s building in Portland have been denounced as huge, cheap and ugly—tells WW he’s being unfairly scapegoated for following the city’s rules.

What he wants: His original deal with the city: no required onsite parking for the 37th Street Apartments.

“It’s just punishment
after punishment,” says Sackhoff. “If they want a public flogging, I’ll
agree—maybe next Friday we could do it. I’ll take my whacks, and then
let’s get going.”